To compete more effectively in the marketplace, an increasing number of commercial entities have decided to engage in strategic business alliances or partnerships. Strategic alliances permit companies to accelerate revenue growth and market expansion by providing access to investment capital, technology, markets, resources and different skill sets. The benefits offered by an alliance or partnership arrangement can enhance the ability of a company to produce and deliver products and services in a competitive marketplace. Competition is particularly an issue for relatively smaller companies that may not have the financial resources, information technology, and market access of larger commercial enterprises.
A strategic alliance usually requires the companies involved to share a variety of information. One solution for information exchange is installation of a frame relay to connect companies and establish a medium for data transactions. The static nature of frame relay technology, however, limits flexibility of the business decisions that can be made by the companies. As more connection options have become available, businesses have been able to choose a connectivity mix based on two primary business drivers: the company's pricing model and its partnering strategies. Connectivity options such as the Internet and other networking arrangements including, for example, secure hosting and IP-based VPN, have became available to entities seeking to leverage strategic business alliances. In addition, many companies have migrated to high-speed dynamic solutions. The use of dynamic extranets, for example, is expected to continue to grow in association with facilitation of information exchange between and among companies in strategic alliances.
It can be appreciated that companies that participate in strategic alliances must address a number of challenges. Once connected, a company in the alliance must identify and allocate resources to create point-to-point application integration with one or more of their alliance partners. Furthermore, business leaders often pursue connectivity decisions that lock the company into a long-term partnership or force the company into a bidding marketplace: there is often no middle ground between these extremes.
Companies that choose to grow through strategic partnerships may be forced to compromise information technology and systems security. Every connection that a company creates typically requires providing access through one or more firewalls of its computer systems. The purpose of a firewall is to limit external access to the computer systems and proprietary information of a company. This purpose can be frustrated, though, by the efforts of the company to improve connectivity and promote data exchange with its strategic partners.
In addition, establishing industry or cross-industry standards can be difficult or impossible, because conventional computing models are usually developed as single-company solutions and technology is rapidly changing. As a result, financial resources must be expended to conduct application integration projects with partners. Effective connectivity may require, for example, a common software application installed by all partners in an alliance to permit data exchange and collaboration. Therefore, some partners may be forced into using an undesirable software application, and new partners who may be added to the alliance may be forced to install and use the same software application to permit information exchange within the alliance.
To maintain competitiveness in the marketplace, companies must expend resources to perform research and development and/or to acquire new technology for producing and providing products and services. The ability of a company to increase the pace of its product development cycle and decrease the time to market for new products and services has a direct impact on the commercial success of the company. To focus on core competencies and conserve time, companies need to pursue collaborative efforts to expand their technical and operational resources pursuant to new product development. These collaborative efforts often involve cross-enterprise collaboration that requires effective information exchange.
Many companies experience delays in new product development due to a number of factors including, for example, isolated upfront planning, execution of project tasks in a linear, non-parallel fashion, misalignment of expectations between partners, poor or ineffective means of communication, and incompatible corporate cultures. An overarching problem is that the middle market cannot usually afford the sorts of tools that are necessary to allow collaboration between companies. Conventional ways of exchanging information in a collaborative effort between companies include electronic mail, exchange of electronic documents, video conferencing, telephone communication, and the like. These conventional ways of exchanging information are often ineffective at maximizing collaborative efforts.
What are needed, therefore, are improved methods and systems for centralized management of electronic data exchange between and among partners involved in a strategic alliance or partnership.